The Week That Was: Clash Royale Tournaments

Editor’s Note: MoEsport would like to give a warm welcome to our newest contributing writer Rastreus! One of the more active players in the Clash Royale competitive scene, Rastreus is an occasional Mobcrush streamer and dreams of one day become a full-time Clash Royale player. Be sure to follow the all latest from Rastreus on his Twitter!

In stunning fashion, Clash Royale released a massive update last Monday. It was a much-needed boost of excitement for a game which had started to lull. The update brought both a new Arena and four cards, but the single best addition to the game: tournaments. Many players had been longing for a competitive in-game feature (similar to Clash of Clan’s Clan Wars) which utilized the Tournament Standard levels in order to truly test their skill against others.

MonsterDFace shoutcasting an exciting moment as the match heads to sudden death.

The Clash Royale team listened and delivered. And boy, did they ever deliver. Not only did tournament mode come, it brought along an entire week of celebration and intense competition. The best players were finally able to clash against (in)famous leaderboard players and favorite content creators. This happened all while streamers commentated each and every heroic troop placement or minor misplay of matches that left thousands of concurrent viewers on the edge of their seat to see who would be victorious.

It was a week that even managed to make getting into a tournament a thrill. Quickly typing in passwords and repeatedly jamming the join button caused a wave of adrenaline to wash over some players when the subtle text of “Tournament joined!” flashed across the screen; however, even more players were deflated (or enraged) by not being able to get into the tournament. Occasionally, a password snafu tilted the odds of getting into the tournament to the favor of those that were more observant (i.e. Galadon typing the password where viewers could see his on-screen keyboard), but it was largely a fair process and a desperate race for everyone.For a game with two-week long seasons, this single week of tournaments seemed to be a hyperbolic time chamber for the meta. Solid strategies
earlier in the week were soon superseded by more successful strategies. Each and every day brought a slight variation to brand new deck
archetypes as more players began to fully realize the power of defensive, chip-based decks that ran supreme in the three minutes of sudden death. The Miner and Furnace seemed to come out as the MVPs of tournament week – displaying that cards which are dull on the ladder happen to shine brightly under the Tournament Standard. But then again, those cards are (probably) already passé by now.

No matter the deck composition, tournament week revealed that the best players rise to the top. Some of the game’s elite players gemmed tourney chests in order to constantly play and consistently win in the top 10 of large, 800-to-1,000 player tournaments. Skill, endurance and mental fortitude were definitely required to pull off feats of such caliber. It was a monumental week which showed that Clash Royale has all the potential in the world to be an engaging eSport with exciting gameplay from pro-level players.

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The future of Clash Royale and the in-game tournaments mode springs to mind now that tournament week is over. Will tournaments roll over and die out now that the hype is gone? No, tournaments are here to stay. The Clash Royale team has said that this is only the beginning. Tournaments will be polished and refined to perfection similar to every facet of the game. This week has given the team more than enough data in this regard. Don’t lose hope if you let the week pass by without playing in a single tournament. Chief Pat will make up for lost time once he is back from vacation and gets his technical difficulties fixed. And like Pat, plenty of other streamers, content creators and esports organizations will surely host tournaments regularly.

As for myself, I’m anxiously waiting to see what wacky Log deck will hit the meta soon.